Citation

Diwo R. Neuropsychiatr. Enfance Adolesc. 1999; 47(4): 200-214.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The author focusses on the attempted suicide in adolescence, presently one of the most alarming problems of public health. He refers to the three theoretical fields of epidemiology, psychoanalysis and psychosomatics, to emphasize the importance of external reality with internal reality, and to put to the test a model of the links between these two realities for the suicidal adolescent. The comparative approach of two groups of twenty adolescents aged between 13 and 19, suicidal or non-suicidal, carried out using two tools, a questionnaire about life events and a projective test, the Rorschach, enables to assess on one hand, the degree of external overload weighting on these adolescents and on another hand, thanks to relevant Rorschach indicators, the quality of their mentalization as well as the extent of their imaginary space. The hypothesis, made for the suicidal adolescent, of a more intense external overload, a weaker mentalization and a poorer imaginary space, are confirmed on an empirical basis thanks to a quantitative and qualitative data analysis. This study has also a prevention objective in the sense that it enables to define critical overload limits and to assess the seriousness of the situations as well as the capacity of these adolescents to start the psychic work.

Language: fr

Keywords

adolescence; Adolescence; adolescent; aggression; Attempted suicide; child psychiatry; clinical article; human; life event; Life events; Mentalization; personality test; questionnaire; review; Rorschach; suicide attempt